


break it down

by chidorinnn



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: (mostly) Canon Compliant, (with some minor tweaks), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon-Typical Violence, Female Persona 5 Protagonist, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21541417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chidorinnn/pseuds/chidorinnn
Summary: Something sparks in her temples, cutting through the endless spiral of her thoughts — a harsh, burning pain that makes her wonder if her head is going to explode.Is that it, then?says a voice that reverberates through her skull.Was it all a mistake?She squeezes her eyes shut against the pain and thinks of the boy on the floor, ready to die for her within moments of knowing her even though she has yet to learn his name — of a woman who was in trouble, when no one else was coming to help.(It wasn’t.)a female protagonist AU
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	break it down

It starts like this: there’s a man’s hands on another woman, late enough in the evening that the neighbors will call the police on anyone who is this loud whether or not someone is hurt. The woman is young, twenty-something years old; the man, at least two decades older. He reeks of alcohol — on his breath, and seeped into his clothes — and perhaps it wouldn’t be so odd after all, to see him acting the same way if he were entirely sober.

“Just get in the car, damn it!”

The woman struggles, flailing against his grip. “Someone help, please!”

Rei is no hero. She’s smaller than the both of them, and nowhere near as strong — but the woman is screaming for help, and no one is coming.

She steps in, positions herself as a physical barrier between the man and the woman and stands as tall as she possibly can. The man gives her a look of such utter disgust and contempt that she almost wants to cry as he looms over her, so much bigger and so much stronger than her and so, so capable of destroying everything that she is — but the woman chokes on a sob behind her, and so she digs her heels in and glares right back.

“Sorry, kid,” the man sneers. “You’re not my type.”

Later, she won’t be able to remember who moves first: the man putting his hands on her, harsh and painful even if it’s just to push her aside — or her blocking his path, doing everything in her power to get in his way — but then he gets close, too close, and before she can think to do otherwise, she gives him a _shove_.

The man falls at an angle, hitting his head on the curb. There’s a long cut on his forehead, so much blood pouring out of it that it’s a wonder he can stand at all, even as he staggers slowly, shakily to his feet.

Amidst the sirens blaring in the night and the woman’s sobs, the man glowers at Rei with one hand covering his face and says: “Damn bitch… I’ll sue!”

* * *

“Assault, resisting arrest, lying under oath, even prostitution… what _haven’t_ you done, Rei Amamiya?”

Principal Kobayakawa reads out the charges against her severely, like an executioner. Lines press into Sakura-san’s brow, next to her, and Rei averts her eyes downward and does her very best to make herself seem as small as possible. Resisting arrest, lying under oath, prostitution — those had been bold-faced lies, a neat way to tie the whole story together in a way that cast all of the blame on her.

But assault? That was harder to explain. The context is irrelevant when she did, indeed, push that man.

It’s difficult to ignore the way the principal’s eyes linger on her shoulders before drifting down to where her skirt ends just above her knees — and so she focuses on answering his questions as best as she can: no, she’s not pregnant. No, she’s not looking to _become_ pregnant. No, she’s not sexually active. No, she’s never smoked or done drugs, and the only alcohol she remembers consuming had been from rum-filled chocolates her father had once brought home from Europe — and even those, she’d eaten only accidentally.

“You may think,” says the principal, “that now that you’re in the big city, that gives you the freedom to behave as you please. But know this: nothing that you may have gotten away with in whatever backwater village you came from will be tolerated there. Keep your head down and your nose clean, and you just might make it through the year.”

Her homeroom teacher, a woman with a mop of dark, curly hair, hands her an ID card with a withering look, and Rei can only wonder how miserable it must be, to be called into work on a Sunday for _this_.

Then Principal Kobayakawa gestures towards a girl in a school uniform next to him, with short brown hair and red eyes. “This is our student council president. Please refer to her if you require any further assistance regarding student affairs.”

The girl’s lips curve upward, and she bows politely. She’s the only student at this school who should know why they’re congregated here, and yet there’s a part of Rei that bristles anyway because no one had bothered to ask her first. “Pleased to meet you,” says the student council president. “My name is Makoto Niijima.”

* * *

The thing is, Rei doesn’t blame the woman for lying. Not really.

Sometimes, in moments of wishful thinking, she wonders what it would have been like had their situations been reversed — if she would have had it in her to throw everything to the wayside to defend her protector, because _damn_ the consequences if it meant doing what was right. Even on the best days, it feels like more strength than she’s capable of.

Just putting herself between him and that woman had taken nearly everything that she had to give. It’s still taking from her now, months later.

“—and over here,” says Niijima-senpai, “is the faculty room. Ms. Kawakami said for you to come here tomorrow morning, right?”

“Mm,” Rei answers, a bit listlessly. Niijima-senpai, too, is someone who shouldn’t have to be here on a Sunday.

But the student council president is at least outwardly nice, nicer than the principal and Ms. Kawakami and even Sakura-san, and so she doesn’t feel too bad when the smile that Niijima-senpai gives her doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Is everything all right, Amamiya-san?

No, nothing is okay — shouldn’t that be obvious? But it’s not Niijima-senpai’s fault that Rei is here in a city so much bigger than what she calls home, where everything is _too loud_ and _too much_ and there are too many people she’s disappointed well before she’s even met them.

“I’m fine, Niijima-senpai,” she answers anyway. “You were saying about the faculty lounge?”

“Right,” says Niijima-senpai. “Not _all_ teachers congregate here, but you’ll have better luck finding a majority of them here regardless. Usually in the mornings, before class, though you might be able to catch one or two of them after school.”

Rei inhales deeply. Something congeals, painfully, in her chest, but she keeps her face blank and her eyes averted downward, and pretends that it does not exist.

* * *

Home, for the longest time, had been a village up in the mountains, surrounded by an abundance of and shrines and rice fields as far as you could see. Her parents owned the only hospital in town — her mother, a surgeon, and her father, in management. Rei had inherited from them her father’s dark, wavy hair and her mother’s sharp, amber eyes.

There was a science, her mother liked to say, to convincing people to support you by your appearance alone. The world favored the beautiful, and so it was important that Rei always wore her hair long and smiled easily. And her mother was right, to an extent — her classmates, the same she’d known since grade school, would smile at her, be kind to her. There had been a boy she dated for a time in middle school before his family moved to Kyoto, a beautiful senpai she’d almost confessed to herself before losing the nerve to properly ask her out.

None of it helped when the judge brought down his gavel, and all of a sudden she was no longer _Rei Amamiya, daughter of Choushiro and Akiha Amamiya, studying to join the family business_ , but _Rei Amamiya, juvenile delinquent_.

“You should’ve just stayed out of it,” Sakura-san had said just hours after she’d arrived in Tokyo. He’s hardly the first person to say so — her parents, in harsh, scolding tones — her classmates, in whispers loud enough for her to hear in the single week of class she’d been able to attend before getting expelled — they’d all beaten him to it. Damn near her entire hometown had beaten him to it — all those mountains and shrines and rice fields, quiet and still as ever, as her home closed its doors to her.

It would have been better for everyone, they’d said, if she’d simply kept her head down and not caused any trouble.

—everyone except, maybe, that woman who had cried out for help.

* * *

It ends like this: a boy with dyed blonde hair is held down by a monstrous suit of armor that is not quite human — his teeth gritted as he yells for her to _run_. There’s a man in a red cloak emblazoned with hearts, a gaudy, glittering crown atop his head in a cruel mockery of what the boy had said is a gym teacher. Belatedly, this man registers as the one who had offered her a ride to school not too long ago.

She should have just taken the ride.

Her head hurts from where it’s been slammed into the wall. It’s still nothing compared to what the boy on the floor must be facing and she wonders why, before all of this, she never thought to ask for his name.

The gym teacher laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and not for the first time, she wonders if it would have truly been so bad to just go to juvie hall. She wouldn’t have had to deal with any of this over there — no schools that want nothing to do with her beyond what little she can do for their reputation, no principals that sneer down their noses at her in the same breath that they take note of every which way her uniform clings to her body, no homeroom teachers burdened with extra problem students, no student council presidents forced to come to school on a Sunday for something so pointless, no disgruntled cafe owners inconvenienced by some imitation of charity that they’ll bemoan every step of the way.

Something sparks in her temples, cutting through the endless spiral of her thoughts — a harsh, burning pain that makes her wonder if her head is going to explode. _Is that it, then?_ says a voice that reverberates through her skull. _Was it all a mistake?_

She squeezes her eyes shut against the pain and thinks of the boy on the floor, ready to die for her within moments of knowing her even though she has yet to learn his name — of a woman who was in trouble, when no one else was coming to help.

(It wasn’t.)


End file.
